


Lost Words

by Qwyzm



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ableism, Asexual!Sherlock, Autistic!Sherlock, Gen, Nonverbal!Sherlock, Sign Language, The early days of their flatshare, ace!sherlock, aspie!sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qwyzm/pseuds/Qwyzm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John waited as one, two, three text messages came in on his mobile. He thumbed through the texts, reading them a few times, and scrubbed his face with his palm. He glanced over the message in its entirety and sighed as he looked down at Sherlock. "Okay, so you're physically fine, not sick, but you can't speak right now because you've..." John glanced back at his mobile. "Lost your words?"<br/>--<br/>Aspie!Sherlock, queerplatonic Johnlock<br/><b>WARNING:</b> ableism, meltdown-type situation</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John smiled at his last patient of the day (a pleasant young woman who had come in complaining of a sore throat) and bid her a good evening. Almost as soon as the door clicked shut, John's phone buzzed in his pocket, twice, signifying two text messages. He rolled his eyes, ignoring it in favour of straightening up the examination room and gathering his things. Sherlock would never catch another glimpse of his work schedule if he could help it. He received several more texts as he prepared to leave, but ignored those too. Sherlock had to learn about timing. Perhaps they could have a talk when he got home.

John was standing at the front of the clinic chatting up the cute new receptionist with whom he had shared a few small smiles throughout the day when Sherlock called him. John groaned and winced slightly as he turned away to take the call. "Sorry, flatmate." He laughed weakly and turned around, nearly growling into his mobile, "What?!"

There was no response on the other side of the line, only a distressed breathing pattern and a quiet noise that sounded like a whimper. After a few seconds, Sherlock hung up, leaving John confused and gaping at his mobile.

He turned back to the receptionist with concern etched in his features. "Sorry, gotta run." He nodded quickly and dashed away, her faint response lost to the thrumming of blood pounding in his ears. Outside the clinic, John paused. His Army training kicked in and he evaluated the situation. Sherlock had texted him incessantly and had actually _called_ him, unusual for his flatmate, but he had waited until John's shift ended. Sherlock had been electronically silent up until then, which was highly uncharacteristic of his friend, but John had considered it a form of apology for last week's row over tongues in the freezer. Sherlock normally had no qualms about pestering him at work over even the littlest things, and if he was in trouble, he would be sure to let John know, regardless of John's agenda. John reasoned that Sherlock must not be in grave danger, but he was clearly distressed, as evidenced by the wordless phone call.

John opened his phone and skimmed through the texts he'd received since his shift had ended.

_John._  
 _Come home._  
 _John._  
 _You're off work now._  
 _Come._  
 _John._

Sherlock then called him, hung up almost immediately, and texted John again.

_Apologies._

John frowned and texted Sherlock back.

_Where are you? JW_

_Home._

John closed his phone and looked at the time before sliding it into his pocket. Rush hour. The Tube would be packed, with more delays than usual. He pursed his lips and hailed a cab. "221b Baker Street please, and quickly," he ordered.

Fifteen minutes later, John arrived at the flat.

He was met by a disaster area. That is, more of a disaster than usual. He stood in the doorway, looking at the mess before him. Several of his densest medical texts were strewn around the living room–on the coffee table, on the floor, on the couch–some neatly stacked, some lay haphazardly on the floor. Sherlock's violin lay on John's armchair, the case hanging open on the seat and the bow propped up across the arm. There was a trail of clothing – Sherlock's, by the look of it – around the floor, leading up to the detective himself. Sherlock was curled up in his armchair, sitting sideways with his knees drawn to his chest and his head leant against the back. His left arm was wrapped loosely around his shins. The right was bent (somewhat uncomfortably, by the looks of it) to allow him to thread his fingers in his dark curls. He was watching John with a tight expression and guarded eyes. John let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. He was mildly relieved to see Sherlock was in fact wearing _something_ (even underwear was better than nothing), but most of all, he was glad to see that his flatmate looked okay – physically, anyway. He moved out of the doorway, putting down his bag and hanging up his jacket.

"Well, I'm here," he said mildly.

Sherlock didn't make any move to leave his chair or even wave lazily at John. He let go of his hair to pick up his phone, which had been lying on his stomach, and fiddled with it. A moment later, John received a text. He looked at Sherlock sideways before taking his mobile out and looking at the message.

_I don't feel well._

John lifted his gaze up to Sherlock and asked, "Are you sick?"

Sherlock shook his head and slowly beckoned John with a slight twitch of his fingers.

"Then what's wrong?" John frowned and examined Sherlock closer as he picked his way through the mess on the floor. Sherlock seemed to have a good colour, not flushed and not too pale. The way he was contorted in his chair indicated that he didn't have any serious muscle or bone injuries or pains. They weren't on a case at the moment, which probably accounted for some of Sherlock's mopey attitude, but the past few days had seemed different. Sherlock had been strangely silent, busying himself with God only knew what while John was at the clinic, and ignoring John when he came home, instead going to his bedroom and refusing to come out.

Sherlock didn't offer any answers to John's question. Instead, he continued silently watching John in his usual hawk-like fashion.

After John had worked his way over to Sherlock's armchair, nearly tripping over the shirt on the floor, the detective shifted and snatched his right hand, pulling it to his head. Some of the tension left Sherlock's shoulders, but his face was as tight and pinched as when John had opened the door. Sherlock took a measured breath and tapped out a message on his phone. Meanwhile, John stood next to Sherlock, feeling completely clueless, but going along with it for Sherlock's sake. When Sherlock finished typing, he held up his phone for John to see.

The message read, "I'll explain. Keep your phone out."

John raised an eyebrow and quirked his lips slightly, but nodded. He slipped out his mobile and leaned on the side of Sherlock's chair. He opened his texts with Sherlock and crossed right arm to prop up his left elbow as he waited for Sherlock to explain himself.

Sherlock uncurled himself enough to type easily and immediately started furiously tapping away, pausing a few times and frowning as he typed. When he finished, he sent John the massive text and curled up into a tight ball again.

John waited as one, two, three text messages came in on his mobile. He thumbed through the texts, reading them a few times, and scrubbed his face with his palm. He glanced over the message in its entirety and sighed as he looked down at Sherlock. "Okay, so you're physically fine, not sick, but you can't speak right now because you've..." John glanced back at his mobile. "Lost your words?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and grunted. He curled himself up even tighter, ducking his head between his thighs and his chest.

John's frown deepened slightly. "I don't speak Sherlockese, you know. You'll have to confirm or deny whether that's correct."

Sherlock just snorted.

"Assume my literacy skills are up to par and I've read this correctly, I still have no bloody idea what it means. Or what to do about it," John snapped.

Sherlock fidgeted and grunted again, twisting slightly within his self-contained bundle of limbs and fabric. John just waited and was rewarded with a new text message. Apparently Sherlock wasn't ready to face him yet. Still, something was better than nothing. John took out his phone and read Sherlock's message.

_Yes. Lost my words. My mother used that phrase. It's an adequate description. Problem?_

John shook his head, shifting his weight and glancing wistfully over at his chair.

Sherlock poked his head out and stole a glimpse, then darted an arm out to block John from moving to his chair. He deftly wrote a text with one hand.

_Don't leave me._

John made a quiet noise of protest and said, "I'm not leaving, I'm just tired. I'll put your violin away."

Sherlock slowly released John's arm and nodded his permission. As John dealt with the violin, Sherlock adjusted himself in the chair until he was more or less sitting upright, his legs still curled in front of him. He idly tugged on his hair with his left hand as he watched John clear off the opposite armchair.


	2. Chapter 2

When John sat down and directed his gaze at Sherlock expectantly, he was surprised to see Sherlock start signing to him. A simple "Thank you" is all he signed, but living and working with Sherlock Holmes had sharpened John's observation skills, already keen from being a doctor, never mind an excellent marksman. John noted that Sherlock appeared to have signed it naturally, as if it were a reflex.

John reached back into his memory, wetting his lips slightly, and hesitantly signed back, "You know BSL?" He frowned a bit in concentration and his movements were a bit clumsy, but he seemed to get the message across.

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow and nodded slightly, narrowing his eyes in thought. John thought he saw a spark of amusement in Sherlock's eyes as he signed, "Just speak. Your comprehension is better than your practical ability."

John nodded back and muttered, "Okay." He could feel the tips of his ears growing hot and and offered an explanation, "It's been a while since I've actually _signed_ ," he said. "But I can interpret fairly well. It was useful in Afghan and occasionally here, at the clinic." John cleared his throat self-consciously and looked up at Sherlock again.

Sherlock stared back at him, definitely with an amused glint in his eyes this time. He tucked his chin on his knees, loosely curling his arms around his legs, and after a moment, his right hand snaked between his sandwiched legs and torso to grab his mobile again. He brought the phone in front of his legs and squeezed himself tight again. He began typing out another message and lightly skimmed his chin across the tops of his knees as he typed.

_Texting is easier. I'll try to explain._

John had guessed that Sherlock was going to text him, so he had his phone out and ready when he received Sherlock's message. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at Sherlock. "D'you want me to text you back or..." He slowly raised a hand and shrugged, unsure of what to do and rather why Sherlock was acting like this at all. He knew Sherlock preferred texting, and that he had supposedly "lost his words", but really, they were no more than a meter and a half away from each other, if even that far, and all this fuss seemed a bit ridiculous.

Sherlock shook his head minutely in reply and texted, _Just talk._

After Sherlock sent the message, John noticed that his brow creased and the corners of his mouth tightened. He then screwed his eyes shut and pressed his lips together, a ghost of his former haunted expression lingering in his features. John frowned and opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but he only managed a croak before Sherlock wrapped his arms around his legs and squeezed tightly again, sucking in a deep breath through the corner of his mouth. John pursed his lips and frowned, thoroughly perplexed, but also somewhat curious. When Sherlock held the breath, John began mentally counting the seconds so he could intervene in case Sherlock was doing some experiment on how long he could hold his breath before passing out–that _would_ be a very Sherlock thing to do–and when he arrived at 15, Sherlock slowly deflated. The muscles in Sherlock's arms, lungs, face, and – from what John could see of his compactly folded flatmate – the rest of his body relaxed.

John again opened his mouth to enquire about what was happening, but again he cut himself off when he realised that Sherlock's eyes were still closed and his face still under the blank, methodical expression he wore for deducing difficult cases and... this, apparently. Hopefully it meant Sherlock had achieved the same clarity that high-powered deduction, as John had taken to calling it, required. John watched his friend as he rested his cheek on his knees and slowly nodded.

John was surprised when he realised that he had automatically tuned in to the same silent, bewildered, expectant mindset he found himself in when Sherlock was busy preparing to deliver a neatly wrapped up a case with a sly insult on top. Maybe it was the expression. It was always entrancing, in an odd way, to watch Sherlock's face when it was like this. Externally, it appeared blank as unmarked stone, but John _swore_ he could see Sherlock's mind working like a well-oiled machine through the façade; step by step, fact by fact, teeth turning logically into cogs, locking in place, and moving forward.

The chirping buzz of John's phone in his hand jarred him from his reverie. He blinked and looked down at it, then lifted his gaze back up at Sherlock, still curled against himself, but more languid. His phone was dangling from his fingertips and John might have thought he was asleep if it wasn't for the fluttering of Sherlock's eyelids when he realised John was staring at him. He inhaled deeply and opened his eyes, but otherwise, he remained perfectly still. For the third time, John opened his mouth to say something, but he drew a blank as to what he should actually say. After a moment, he glanced down at his phone again and read Sherlock's text aloud.

"Tell me what you know."

Sherlock arched an eyebrow in response in what John thought was an uncanny impression of a cat.

John took a deep breath and quirked his eyebrows to clear his head of that image. On the exhale, he chuckled quietly. "Tell me what you know," he murmured. "Well, I know that I have no sodding clue what's going on here, honestly." He looked up at Sherlock with a pointed expression.

Sherlock frowned slightly and slowly tapped out, _I was serious._ When he sent the message, his eyes darted around John's face for a few moments, then he resumed staring at either the wall or the back of John's chair – John couldn't tell which.

John sighed, and with a light glare, he scrolled up through their earlier texts. He supposed there was a chance he could glean some information out of them. He shifted in his chair, resting his head on his right fist as he read through their one-sided conversation until he paused, hovering over one of Sherlock's texts from earlier.

_Yes. Lost my words. My mother used that phrase. It's an adequate description. Problem?_

John shot Sherlock a glance and said, "This happened before. When you were a kid."

Sherlock was impassive besides the slight narrowing of his eyes and –maybe; John could have imagined it – a brief flicker behind the dull green stare. After a few moments, he tucked his chin closer to his chest in what John interpreted as a nod.

John frowned slightly and grappled for more. "And, um... I guess you know how to handle it? I mean..." John pointed at Sherlock and wagged his fingers to the side. "What you were doing before with the breathing, and the... with your knees?" John's shoulders rose with his voice as he asked. He gave Sherlock a puzzled look, asking for help.

Sherlock spared him one lingering glance and then set to texting again, unwrapping his left hand from his right leg to aid in typing. Once he finished, he dropped his hands. Again, the phone dangled almost precariously and his free fingers firmly curled around his lower calf. His blank stare returned to the wall, but somehow it looked... cloudier, maybe, than before.

John tried to make eye contact with Sherlock to see if he could better understand what was going on, but to no avail. Sherlock's gaze remained locked in a blank stare that seemed to go right through him whenever John tried to make contact. When it was clear that Sherlock wasn't going to look at him or offer him any other clues, John gave up and stared down at his mobile's small screen, waiting for the message to deliver. When his phone buzzed, he nodded crisply and set to reading it.

_Excellent deductions. Not sarcasm._

"...Okay? Thanks?" What the hell now?

Sherlock's eyes darted back and forth for a moment, then he began typing rapidly. He seemed to reach a moment of pause, however, and a few seconds later, John received a set of instructions.

_Do not read until I am finished. I will nod at you when you may read. Do not say anything until you have finished reading. Leave if you can't comply._

John's eyes widened slightly, but he dropped his phone in his lap, face down to avoid temptation, and looked directly across the room at Sherlock. He was vaguely tempted to walk out and let Sherlock deal with the problem on his own, but he was vaguely reminded of one of his previous discussions (if they could be called that) with Mycroft – a collection of threats and warnings culminating in the agreement that in the event of what Mycroft called a 'danger night', John would stay with Sherlock until he had stabilised. Sherlock seemed unstable – perhaps this was what Mycroft had been talking about.


	3. Chapter 3

When John finally received the signal nearly five minutes later, he nodded in reply and turned his phone over, reading what Sherlock had sent.

_I call myself a high-functioning sociopath. I was diagnosed as a sociopath, age 7, but Mother took me to more people. One said I have Asperger's._

_Autistic spectrum. Developmental disorder._

_I warned you when you moved in that I occasionally don't speak for days._

As John read through them, he glanced up at Sherlock intermittently. He was surprised to see that Sherlock was staring back at him with a blank looking gaze; not vacant, but absent of any telling information. Sherlock was quite obviously carefully focused on identifying and analysing John's reactions and emotions while also preventing his own from showing.

After looking through the texts a couple more times, John cleared his throat to catch Sherlock's attention, though he suspected Sherlock had never broken his concentration.

"I don't see what not speaking has to do with that. Your er... condition," he admitted. "Or why the flat looks like a bloody storm came through it," he continued, gesturing at the chaos around them. John had seen some clips on the telly about kids with autism. He wasn't a complete idiot. He knew that some of them couldn't speak, some got violent. Some got so impossible to take care of, their families killed them. Rough life, yeah, but if Sherlock was going to try and claim that he was like the severe kids on the telly, he'd have another thought coming.

Sherlock pursed his lips at John's scepticism.

_Tell me what you think you know._

That again. Brilliant. "...About?"

_Autism. Asperger's. Me._

John rolled his eyes and sighed. "Like you said, Asperger's is a developmental disorder, it affects kids. It's not caused by vaccines. Some people get it severe, some don't. Um... marked by... a speech delay as a baby, not smiling, bad eye contact... and uh, just not getting along with other kids, from what I remember."

After a brief lull, John added, "Oh, and isn't Asperger's the milder form? With the savants and that?" He tilted his head slightly and leaned forward. "Are _you_ a savant?" That would certainly explain his mysterious powers of deduction.

Sherlock seemed to relax a bit as John explained what he knew. He was back to clutching at his hair with one hand, but his muscles were overall less tense. But, apparently his words hadn't returned from wherever they'd gone, because he flipped his phone upright again and texted a reply.

_I'm not a savant. Symptoms vary regardless of diagnosis. Obviously._

John didn't know how to reply to that for a minute. When the silence grew uncomfortable, he finally said, "But you're an adult."

Sherlock arched an eyebrow sharply, wordlessly demanding further explanation.

"You're not a kid anymore. You can't pitch tantrums and... just expect to explain it away. Same with being rude."

Sherlock blinked at John slowly and rolled his eyes.

_Go away._

John read Sherlock's message and frowned. "What, I'm calling you out, so now you want me to go away?"

Sherlock curled up tighter again, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily.

_You don't understand. Go away._

"What don't I understand?!" John exclaimed, losing his patience with the game Sherlock seemed to be playing.

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut, and a couple of minutes passed before he broke from his statuesque state.

_My age is irrelevant. Your ignorance is frustrating and ultimately you are doing more harm than good. Ignore what I've told you. Go away._

John looked up at Sherlock with an expression caught between anger and hurt. Sherlock had yanked him home from work like there was some sort of emergency happening, then decided to get angry when John didn't understand? He provided almost no context for what was happening, then went off about John's ignorance? He was only explaining what he knew – doing exactly as Sherlock had asked. He was _trying_ to understand and help Sherlock, but apparently he was unwanted.

After a long moment, John snapped his mouth shut and shoved his mobile into his pocket. "Fine. Have a good night, and you'd better clean this up by morning."

He could go out to get dinner and spend the rest of the night in his room. He didn't have to deal with Sherlock. He was a flatmate, not a babysitter, after all. And Sherlock was a grown man, not a kid.

He swept past the detective to grab his laptop, storming to the door as best he could without tripping over the detritus strewn about, and marched upstairs, firmly closing his own door behind him. He tossed his laptop on his bed, tiredly flopping down beside it. _Jesus_ , Sherlock could be tiring. A few minutes of reflection left John feeling a little guilty, and he was suddenly stricken with a pang of panic as he remembered Mycroft's warnings -- the allusions to past troubles, the Yard's impromptu 'drug busts' -- worry began to swirl amongst the anger and frustration that had settled in the seat of his stomach. He slowly pulled his phone out and sent Sherlock a text.

_Don't do anything stupid. If you need anything, let me know._

He stared at his phone waiting for a reply for several minutes, but none came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...So, this ended up taking almost as long as season 3, but it's here. More is coming.


End file.
